'Throbbing Gristle' Partner, Vol. 1, No. 9, February

1980

Tutti, Cosey Fanni

Cosey Fanni Tutti began her career in 1969, appearing in art performances and musical improvisations in and around Hull until 1972. In 1973, she moved to London and continued working as a performance artist. Often working naked in her performances, Cosey went on to investigate self-image within the context of sex magazines and sex films, glamour modelling and striptease acts. Her experiences within these industries were brought into her artwork, seeing her explore the many aspects of sex as it is perceived and transacted as a commercial product.
Her series ‘Throbbing Gristle' Partner, Vol. 1, No. 9, February, 1980 questions claims of authorship and modes of circulation. Unlike her other ‘magazine action’ works, the images, layout and text in Throbbing Gristle, in and amongst the pages of the entire magazine, portray Cosey as an artist, musician and a model, creating a cult of celebrity of sorts, a different kind of persona. This disclosure unmoors, at least from the outside, how a practice may be perceived and how, from the inside, labour can be defined. Here, the artist’s practice can be understood as a way of life, a way of doing as being. This is literally and figuratively embedded in the magazine’s adverts, news items, photos, stories and illustrations. A diagram of the sex industry as much as a document of society, the work also considers what happens spatially when the private practice of consuming porn is made public as art.

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